Estimates by Slider (1990) suggest that the number of candidates backed by the opposition may have made up as much as thirty percent of the new Parliament (Slider 1990, Montgomery and Remington 1994:63). Going by this more generous picture, the moderate opposition did not win nearly enough seats to secure victory against the largely unreforming Communist Party, but they still managed to have a substantial influence on the makeup of the Supreme Soviet. Even so, the Supreme Soviet election of 1990 left Belarus largely under the control mostly unreformed Soviet-era hardliners. Like in the illiberal democracies of East-Central Europe, these developments greatly diminished the amount of electoral competition and consensus on the need for liberalization in the formative years of Belarusian democracy (Mihalisko 1997:242). With a relatively weak opposition, an unreformed Communist Party, and election results that primarily favored the Communists, Belarus’ transition follows an almost ideal model of illiberal regime change.
Section 2.2: Moldova
With EEU member Belarus so clearly reflecting the illiberal pattern, does the Association Agreement signatory state of Moldova follow a more liberal pattern during its Soviet period? Despite inheriting a common Soviet-era legacy of widespread spying, corruption, and strict restrictions on media freedom, Moldova is paradoxically recognized as one of the most successful pluralistic democracies in the former Soviet world, barring the Baltic countries (Way 2003:454). Evidence from the communist era contains elements of both the liberal and the illiberal transition patterns regime change with a reforming Communist Party and a relatively
well-organized opposition. However, this opposition was driven largely by ethnic nationalism rather than the pursuit of liberal democracy.
Between Democracy and Nationalism: The Rise of a Fragmented Popular Front
The development of a strong Moldovan opposition in the 1980s is rooted largely in ethnolinguistic identity. Moldova is home to a particularly complex linguistic geography which includes sizeable populations of Slavic russophones and Turkic-speaking speaking Gagauz (Chinn and Kaiser 1996:163). However, most Moldovans speak an Eastern Romance language often considered to be a dialect of Romanian (Popescu 2014:46). Moldova’s large Slavic population can be linked to the early days of Soviet Moldova, when an influx of Russian- speaking immigrants came to form the bulk of the workforce in urban and industrial centers (Crowther 1997:286). Slavic immigration left other ethnic groups to take on the less prestigious agricultural jobs in rural areas (Crowther 1997:286). The Russians’ privileged socioeconomic status triggered resentment among the poorer Moldovan population, who perceived a pro- Russian discrimination on the part of the Soviet government (Crowther 1997:286).
Part of this resentment was also rooted in the Soviet government’s aggressive sociolinguistic policies, which many Moldovans perceived as a government attempt to undermine Romanian national identity. Most Moldovans consider their language a variety of Romanian, though a sizeable minority considers the Moldovan ethnolinguistic identity to be distinct from that of Romania (Popescu 2014:46). This cleavage was greatly exacerbated during communist times, with the government actively promoting the idea of a unique Moldovan culture in order to isolate Moldovans’ linguistic identity from independent Romania (Crowther 1997:286). For example, the Soviet government imposed the Cyrillic alphabet as the official
writing system in Moldova even though the Latin alphabet was used in Romania, marking a superficial and somewhat artificial means of distancing the language from Romanian (Way 2003:471, Chinn and Kaiser 1996:167).
By 1987, anti-Soviet activists began organizing under two major dissident groups, each with a different set of goals. The first organization, the Democratic Movement in Support of Restructuring, was committed primarily to democratic and economic reform (Crowther 1997:288). The second group, the Aleksey Mateevich Literary-Musical Circle, was significantly more nationalist in nature (Crowther 1997:288). The lack of pro-democratic consensus among the opposition is at odds with the ideal pattern of liberal change. By the time the Popular Front was founded as an umbrella group in 1989, the nationalist ambitions of the opposition seemed to dominate the political discourse (Chinn and Kaiser 1996:167, Way 2003:471).
The combination of perceived anti-Romanian discrimination and pro-Russian policies from the Soviet government caused the Front to rally around a new language bill. The proposed law would make Romanian the Moldovan SSR’s only official language and encourage its use in schools and workplaces which were historically dominated by the Russian language (Way 2003:471). The law also sought to the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet as the language’s official writing system, a symbolic attempt to adopt the orthography used in neighboring Romania and distance Moldova from Russia’s sphere of cultural influence (Way 2003:471). Despite the moderate democrats within the organization, the presence of a sizeable number of ethnonationalist extremists in the Popular Front was particularly concerning for Moldova’s Slavic and Turkic minorities in Transnistria and Gagauzia (Crowther 1997:293, Chinn and Kaiser 1996:167). These nationalistic characteristics of the opposition share some characteristics with the illiberal transition pattern.
Despite conflicting priorities within the movement, the Moldovan Popular Front managed to attract a significant degree of support in the period leading up to the election to the Moldovan Supreme Soviet. At first, the movement had trouble gaining traction. For example, in the 1989 elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies, the Communist Party’s control over nomination meetings caused the vast majority of candidates to be Communist Party members (Crowther 1997:289). Nevertheless, voting patterns during the election seemed to favor independent candidates over Communist Party members in districts where candidates from multiple backgrounds were available (Crowther 1997:289). These trends show that the Communist Party’s electoral manipulation was successful enough to secure electoral victory even against popular will.
The 1989 elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies also gave the opposition forces much-needed publicity, while the placement of several opposition candidates into the Congress allowed them to gain important links to segments of the Communist Party (Crowther 1997:291). Following the election, the Communist Party gave full recognition to the Popular Front opposition (Crowther 1997:291, Way 2003:471). This recognition allowed the Front to hold public meetings with Communist representatives about the need for a new language reform that would favor Moldovan (Crowther 1997:291). The Front also organized massive protests in Chişinaŭ to exert even greater pressure on the Communist government to enact language reform (Crowther 1997:291). When the reform was finally signed into law on August 31, 1991, the Popular Front’s active role in the process greatly contributed to their public image (Crowther 1997:291). The language laws passed during Perestroika marked Moldova’s path towards political and cultural independence from Moscow. The laws harmonized Moldovan orthography
with that of Romanian, reflecting an increasingly pro-Romanian sentiment in the country (Ciscel 2006:576).
While the group’s protest movements led to open clashes with Soviet police, the movement managed to become a major opposition group during the partially free elections to the Moldovan Supreme Soviet in 1990 (Way 2003:471). This election allowed independent candidates to run in the majority of the Republic’s electoral districts (Crowther 1997:293). Here, Popular Front candidates ran on a platform of democratization, national sovereignty, and a transition to free market capitalism (Crowther 1997:292). In addition to enjoying relative freedom to run in the majority of electoral districts, Popular Front candidates were able to campaign openly and were allowed advertising space in newspapers published by the republican Central Committee (Crowther 1997:292).
The nature of the opposition seems to lie somewhere in between the liberal and illiberal patterns of regime change. Like the opposition in the ideal liberal patterns of Vachudova (2005), the Moldovan popular front managed to organize openly and became an influential force in the political scene. However, while the Front campaigned on democratic reform during the Supreme Soviet elections, their focus on nationalistic issues like language reform over democratic reform shows that liberalization may not have been the organization’s biggest priority.
A Partially Reforming Communist Party
The nature of the Moldovan Communist Party also differed greatly from that of Belarus. Whereas the mass exodus of reformists from the Belarusian Communist Party left the organization in the hands of hardline conservatives, the Moldovan Communist Party was home to a sizeable reformist faction. Some of these reformers were openly endorsed by the Popular
Front during the 1990 Supreme Soviet election, which reflected a certain degree of consensus on the need for democratic reform between both the opposition and segments of the Communist Party (Crowther 1997:293). One notable personality was Mircea Snegur, a reformist member of the Communist Party who in the mid-1980s acted as a Central Committee Secretary and was appointed as the president of the Moldovan Supreme Soviet in 1989 (Crowther 1997:292). By the 1990 elections to the Supreme Soviet, Snegur adopted many of the pro-democratic positions of the Popular Front moderates, even though he remained a member of the Communist Party (Crowther 1997:293). Vachudova (2005) demonstrates that a reforming Communist Party can be an important ingredient in the development of a liberal democracy, making this aspect of the Moldovan transition much more liberal in nature than the unreforming Communist Party in Belarus.
The Triumph of the Moderates: A Partial Victory for the Popular Front
During the 1990 election, the Popular Front opposition won roughly one fourth of seats in the Supreme Soviet, nearly four times that of the Belarusian Popular Front (Way 2003:471). Like in Belarus, this result was not nearly enough to establish a majority in the Supreme Soviet, but still enough to radically alter the internal composition of the elected institution (Montgomery and Remington 1994:64). Where Moldova’s 1990 Supreme Soviet election differs from that of Belarus is in the fact that the Popular Front was able to form a majority in combination with the large reformist segment of the Communist Party which they had officially endorsed during the election. The rise of these moderate factions represents a much larger transfer of power away from unreforming hardliners than what was seen in Belarus (Crowther 1997:293).
Table 2: Outcome of 1990 Moldova Supreme Soviet Elections
Party Number of mandates Percent of mandates
Communist Party 305 75
Popular Front 101 25
Source: Crowther 1997:294 All things considered, Moldova proves to be somewhat of a mixed case when it comes to its pattern of democratic reform in the Soviet era. The presence of a reforming Communist Party and a well-organized opposition are compatible with liberal transitions, though the ethnonationalist leanings of certain opposition members is a decidedly more illiberal trait. Unlike the liberal regimes, the democratic opposition alone did not win an outright majority in the first democratic elections. However, the fact that the elections were nevertheless dominated by a combination of opposition candidates and moderate Communists makes the early period of Moldova’s transition much more liberal than that of Belarus, which was dominated almost entirely by hardline Communists desperate to reverse the liberalizing reforms of Gorbachev. For these reasons, Moldova’s communist period follows the liberal pattern much more closely than does Soviet Belarus.
Section 2.3: Armenia
The Armenian Opposition: Nationalist Roots and Irredentist Ambition
The Armenian opposition movement that arose in the 1980s was predominantly ethnonationalist in nature. In order to understand the characteristics of the Armenian opposition, it is important to recognize Armenia’s long history of Ottoman occupation. Prior to Armenia’s integration into the Soviet Union in the early 20th century, the country was occupied by the Ottoman Turks (Dudwick 1997:72). During this pre-Soviet, the majority of Armenians lived as
an ethnoreligious minority within the Ottoman Empire. Although many Armenians enjoyed substantial influence within the Empire, a rising nationalist movement throughout the 18th and 19th centuries sought to restore Armenia’s national autonomy (Dudwick 1997:72). The Armenian Genocide3 which occurred during the breakup of the Ottoman Empire only strengthened the calls for statehood and the growing anti-Turkish sentiment among ethnic Armenians (Dudwick 1997:72).
Armenia was quickly annexed into the Soviet Union, first as part of the short-lived Transcaucasian SFSR and then as an independent republic from 1936 onward (Tsutsiev 2014:201). Many Armenians tolerated the Soviet regime because it offered protection from Turkish aggression as well as nominal self-rule as a Soviet republic (Dudwick 1997:76). The rapid industrialization and cultural revival that occurred under the Armenian SSR helped legitimize Soviet rule to Armenian nationalists, who viewed these developments as a national renaissance after the dark ages of Turkish oppression (Dudwick 1997:73-76). Nevertheless, nationalist opposition groups gained traction as early as the 1960s. The irredentist National Unification Party, founded in 1966, called for the independence of Armenia as well as the annexation of Armenian-majority regions in Turkey and Nagorno-Karabakh, then an autonomous oblast of the Azerbaijan SSR (Dudwick 1997:76).
Until the 1980s, the Soviet government identified the nationalist movement as a threat and worked to crush nationalist opposition, but the liberalized political climate of Perestroika made way for a resurgence of nationalism. While many Armenians still viewed Moscow as a protector from Turkish aggression, protestors saw Perestroika and Glastnost’ as an opportunity
3 Between 1915 and 1917, ethnic Armenians were rounded up and massacred by Turkish forces during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. As many as 1.5 million Armenians are believed to have been killed during the ethnic cleansing campaign (Kifner).
to exert greater pressure on the government to reform or to transfer Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenian SSR (Dudwick 1997:78). Other issues like environmental protection and political reform were politically salient among certain segments of the opposition, but the ethnonationalist aspect of the movement seemed to be the only unifying force for Armenian dissidents (Dudwick 1997:77). The reformist and nationalist segments of the opposition often found themselves at odds with one another during this period of renewed civil activism, with the nationalists seeing the anti-corruption movements of the liberal reformists as a threat to Armenia’s leadership (Dudwick 1997:78).
The various opposition groups organized themselves under the name of the Armenian National Movement (ANM). Under this umbrella organization, one of the most influential groups was the irredentist Karabakh Committee, showing that the nature of opposition in Armenia was still dominated more by ethnic irredentism than other issues such as democratic reform and environmental protection (Dudwick 1997:79). The largely nationalist nature of the opposition is at odds with the liberal pattern of regime change.
The growing opposition movement was exceedingly well organized, and successfully used a combination of public protest and electoral campaigning to exert influence in the face of government crackdown. In order to pressure the Armenian communist government to push for annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh, voters began writing in candidates who were members of the Karabakh Committee during a 1988 parliamentary election meant to fill in vacant seats in the Supreme Soviet (Dudwick 1997:79). When two opposition candidates won, the government responded by rejecting the results, causing mass demonstrations that successfully pressured the government to accept the results (Dudwick 1997:79). Despite the eventual acceptance of
Committee candidates, the government continued to suppress the opposition until democratization.
In December 1988, the Soviet government arrested the Karabakh Committee (Dudwick 1997:80). The release of the political prisoners became a key issue during the elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies that year. Because the election featured only candidates sponsored by the Communist Party, voters responded by boycotting the elections, forcing the government to hold runoff elections in four districts. Voters then mobilized to place candidates associated with the ANM into office via these repeat elections, reflecting the beginnings of a transfer of power from the Communist Party to the opposition (Dudwick 1997:80). These developments show that while the Armenian government took a relatively firm stance against the opposition, the movement remained organized enough to maintain a sizeable influence.
The Communist Party: Co-Opting Nationalism
In the leadup to the 1990 elections to the Armenian Supreme Soviet, the Communist Party of Armenia became increasingly willing to cooperate with the opposition on certain issues. While one might argue that this changing platform exemplified a reforming Communist Party, it is important to note that the majority of consensus between the Communists and opposition was around the national question. In the early stages of the Karabakh dispute, the Communist Party of Armenia drew criticism from nationalists for its willingness to cooperate with the central Soviet government, which was unwilling to redraw the internal borders of the Soviet Union for the sake of Armenian nationalism (Rutland 1994:846-848). Following the elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies, however, the Armenian government decided to release the Karabakh Committee leadership from prison and began talks with opposition (Rutland
1994:848). Communist Party members began supporting the ANM’s call for the annexation of Nagorno Karabakh, a fact which attracted nationalists to the Communist Party (Dudwick 1997:81). When the ANM ran for the Moldovan Supreme Soviet in 1990, the majority of its candidates were in fact Communist Party members (Dudwick 1997:81). This overlap demonstrates a changing dynamic within the Communist Party, which adopted elements of the nationalist opposition in order to remain politically relevant. By the elections of 1990, the Communist Party and the ANM agreed on the vast majority of issues on the table (Rutland 1994:852). While a reforming Communist Party is an important component of a liberal transition towards democracy, the nationalist nature of this reform deviates from the ideal liberal pattern.
The Victory of Nationalism
The opposition proved enormously successful in the election to the Supreme Soviet in 1990. Once the members of the Karabakh Committee were released from prison, they quickly ran for office in the Supreme Soviet in 1990 (Dudwick 1997:80). In these multiparty elections, the Communist Party emerged as the dominant political force, winning 136 seats compared to the ANM’s 59 seats (Grotz and Rodriguez McKey 2001:335).
On the surface, Armenia’s communist-era history appears to mirror the liberal regime Table 3: Results of the 1990 Armenia Supreme Soviet Elections
Party Number of mandates Percent of mandates
Communist Party 136 69.7
ANM 59 30.3
reforming Communist Party are all common to the liberal regime pattern. However, the majority of the opposition was predominantly irredentist in nature, while the new platforms adopted by the Communist Party were similarly nationalistic While the ANM did win a significant minority of the vote, it is also important to note that nearly half of the ANM deputies were associated with the Communist Party, a fact that many voters tolerated because of their support for the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh (Rutland 1994:852, Dudwick 1997:81). By co-opting the nationalist cause, the old communist leadership was able to maintain a sizeable amount of influence both within and outside the ANM. In Armenia’s case, it was ethnic irredentism—not democratization—that was the motivating force for both the opposition and the “reforming” Communists. The lack of commitment to democratic reform makes Armenia’s case fundamentally different from the liberal regime pattern.
Section 2.4: Georgia
An Anti-Russian Opposition
Like in neighboring Azerbaijan, the opposition movement that developed in Soviet Georgia was largely nationalist in nature, though the pursuit of democracy played a large role in